Christmas, Crescents, and Crosses: When Is Symbolic Religious Establishment Permissible?

Abstract

Symbolic religious establishment (SRE), that is, the noncoercive recognition of religion by the state, has become the object of a growing debate in political philosophy. Although SRE is purely symbolic, some have argued that it can be wrong because of the message of political inequality that it sends. The indeterminacy of this expressive argument makes its application problematic, however. The objective of this article is to improve the applicability of the expressivist argument by providing clear guidelines of evaluation of SRE. I develop a three-step test that helps distinguish permissible from impermissible cases of SRE: religious symbols that are divisive, political, and not appropriately justified are impermissible because of their exclusionary message. One important upshot of the argument is that the appeal to the value of heritage does not provide a plausible justification for the introduction of new religious symbols, and therefore that such neo-establishment is always impermissible.